B-Greek: The Biblical Greek Forum

Tell us about interesting projects involving biblical Greek. Collaborative projects involving biblical Greek may use this forum for their communication - please contact jonathan.robie@ibiblio.org if you want to use this forum for your project.

Hello everyone
Is there a way to type greek characters, or do I have to do a copy and paste to achieve that?
I am working on a website to teach early Christianity (first couple centuries), messianic prophecies to show how the apostles preached, share Koine Greek resources that I might develop over time with those learning, and some other biblical material. I am still learning Koine Greek, only been studying most days (a couple hours per day) for a bit over a year now but want to share what I can.

On my new website, I plan to provide the ability to chat, like Facebook that provides it in English, however it will be for Koine Greek students to chat with each others in greek and practice what they are learning. I will have a keyboard displayed with a visual indication of what keys are the greek alphabet, mapped similar when possible to our alphabet keys, so that users logged in can know what keys to press on their regular keyboard to produce greek characters on the screen in the Chat textbox. This is so everyone can practice Koine greek at their level with others. I believe in doing so, this repetitive natural practice of what we are learning with others, will accelerate learning, solidify it into our long term memories as has happened with English so that we can start thinking Greek, rather than have to translate. Lots of repetition does that.

Who would be interested in this sort of Chat program?
... but it won't be an App, it will be on a webpage that will require registration. Imagine you are typing Greek characters to chat with others. Not just translating sentences and paragraphs, but forming them yourself as you type and interpreting what you receive. This seems to me to really be a powerful way to practice what you're learning as long as who you chat with is near your level. Any practical suggestions how to ensure that would be appreciated.

I noticed this post when it appeared. I like this idea. I live on my phone, though, not on my computer. I would like the option of speaking as well as typing as a form of asynchronous communication. There seem to be many software solutions readily available. What's lacking is people. Communication happens best and is most required between people who interact frequently and who are socially, professionally or emotionally close to one another.

Within this online community there are a number of factors that deter second language acquisition. The major on is that most of us are native speakers of the culturally (and media) dominant language English and stepping away from that is a step towards ineptitude and frustration. Second is that there is no " critical mass" community to join into. Most people would like to join a group rather than be pioneers. Thirdly, our interests vary enough that they appear scattered. People like different topics or concentrate on different aspects of the language or vocabulary topics.

If you have a solution for those things, you may achieve some success.

Συγνωμην ἐχετε φιλοι μου. Πολυς χρονος ἐγενετο ἐγω δε οὐκ ἀπεκρίνομην ὑμιν.
I made a lot of progress on a website and then began spending more time with studying Koine greek and some other things. What I want to suggest is what I have done with a few people. I installed the modern greek keyboard on my phone, and use that on Voxer (push to talk) app. If you would be interested in chatting that way, either audibly as we can do there, or typing with the greek keyboard, find me on there.
Brett Hancock
Voxer ID: bhanco731

As an experiment, I set up a Slack team for chat and invited the people who have weighed in here. Give it a try? If anyone else wants to join the Slack team and chat away in Greek, send me a PM with the email address I should use to subscribe you.

Slack works on smartphones and on computers, and you can use Greek with or without diacritics in messages. One downside: it won't let you have a user name in Greek.